Usually fraternities take the flak for rowdy parties and out-of-control keggers, but the girls of…
Read more Read more

Earlier this month, Miami's Pi Beta Phi fraternity for women got a one-year suspension for shitting, vomiting, and having sex all over a facility called Lake Lyndsay Lodge. Then the school's Alpha Xi Delta chapter got suspended for two years for similar antics at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Now, according to Sheila McLaughlin of Cincinnati.com, the sisters of Zeta Tau Alpha face two years probation for their behavior on the bus to and from their April 23 formal. Such behavior included, as is apparently becoming de rigueur for such events, copious vomiting: says a university report, "There was trash and vomit throughout the entire bus." Mike McKinney, owner of the bus company, adds that students also mistreated the driver: "They were calling him a (derogatory homosexual slur) and poking him in the back of the head." Their behavior was so extreme that McKinney told the driver to stop the bus at a gas station and kick the kids off — and when McKinney arrived at the station, "Some of the guys were chasing the driver around in the parking lot."

Predictably, Zeta Tau Alpha has blamed the incident on a few bad apples, saying in a statement, "Our internal investigation revealed that the majority of our members and their guests conducted themselves properly" (to their credit, they do add, "However, we teach our members that their individual actions reflect on the whole chapter"). In an editorial on Cincinnati.com, Timothy Burke takes a similar tack, arguing that "the positive benefits of fraternities and sororities, and the good done by hundreds of thousands of their members, should not be lost because of the idiocy of a few." Interestingly, Burke presents lowering the drinking age as a potential solution to spring-formal vomit-fests: "some have suggested that the age limit has encouraged the hidden use of alcohol by underage students, feeding the kind of 'pre-loading' that may have contributed to the misconduct at the Miami events when some partygoers apparently arrived at the events already drunk." Burke's right that these incidents are hardly likely to inspire a looser alcohol policy. But maybe the Sorority Life game should add a "holding your liquor" function — or, you know, "basic human decency."

Advertisement

Though male dates were apparently involved in all three body-fluid bacchanals, sorority sisters at Miami University seem intent on proving that they can be just as disgusting and boorish as the stereotypical frat guy. But the sisters of Zeta Tau Alpha were less heinous than the other two sororities in one respect. At least they held their formal at a location appropriate to their behavior: a zoo.